United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Other Names: '''Westeros, Middle Earth, Brutain, United Kingdom, Great Britain, England, Oceania. '''Notable Leaders: '''Aerys II Targaryen, '''King Robert Baratheon, King Joeffrey Baratheon, Queen Cersei Lannister, King Théoden, King Aragorn. Queen Georgianna, Prime Minister Julia Montague (Shepherd) '''Capital: '''London '''Population: '''62,000,000 '''Government Type: '''Constitutional monarchy, parliamentary republic '''Language(s): '''English, Welsh (minority), Celtic (minority) '''Currency: '''Pound (1 Pound=$1.25 USD) '''Religion: '''None (de jure), Anglican, Catholicism (minority) '''Economy: '''Britain has long been at the forefront of industrialization and economic development, in some part buoyed by their colonial empire. The notions of free-market capitalism first emerged to prominence in the British Empire. Britain additionally has had to contend with the presence of established gentry in the form of the noble classes. Titles of nobility such as “Earl of Grantham” or “Lord Summerisle” tended to indicate that one was wealthy and would remain such. Meanwhile, many in Britain did experience rampant poverty, though that has alleviated in the modern era. Britain today is a generally well-to-do economy, outside of the ongoing recession. The territory now referred to as the British Isles has been inhabited for thousands of years in periods such as the Westeros age, the Hyborean age, and the “Middle Earth” periods. It was inhabited not only by humans, but various nonhuman species such as elves, hobbits, orcs, and the like. While these species would fade over time, eventually losing the various wars between humans and the species they shared the Earth with over who would dominate thanks to the power of human wizards, they would maintain an underground presence as the “fair folk” often feared by the island’s culture. The main human inhabitants of the British Isles were a mix of those whom had been there since the Hyborean Age and later, Trojan-descended settlers who arrived shortly after the Trojan War ended thanks to the leadership of Brutus of Troy. The land was then called Brutain. It was Brutus who first brought a human presence to the islands, after first wiping out the native race of giants that inhabited the land. As a reward he was granted a wish along with his companion Brennus. Brutus created an entirely new form of magic for use by the wizards and witches of the land. This drew four powerful wizards to found Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland. In the classical age Britain lay on the periphery of the civilized world. Julius Caesar's visitations to the island in 55/54 BC were viewed as a daring voyage into the unknown. But in 43 AD the island was invaded by Roman soldiers under the Emperor Claudius. Over time, the Celtic culture that came to dominate Britain and neighboring Ireland would fall to invasion by the Roman Empire. It was to spend the next four centuries as a Roman province. Britain was considered to be on the frontier of the Roman Empire, facing the world’s largest zombie outbreak of the pre-modern era and an uprising headed by the Celtic warrior queen Boudica. The Romans built cities, roads, and great bathhouses, the ruins of which can still be seen today. The status of Britain as a frontier of an empire led to the Romans building Hadrian’s Wall to keep out the hordes of zombies and uppity Celts that threatened their rule. With the collapse of Roman power under Germanic onslaught, tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century. The first arrivals were invited by a British chieftain to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. These first mercenaries were from three tribes - the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes - which were located on the coastlands of northwestern Germany. Eventually, these peoples would themselves topple the existing order, and Britain would spend many centuries divided between various warring kingdoms such as Mercia, East Anglia, and others. Even the celebrated King Arthur could not unite the island, although he did manage to inspire countless fiefdoms that would later become modern England. The first political entity that could rightly be called "England" formed out of the efforts of the kingdom of Wessex to unite the island against the invasion of Danes and Vikings in the 9th century. But the English domination was fleeting; the subsequent Norman Conquest (1066) resulted in the subordination of England to a Frankish aristocracy, and the introduction of feudalism to the Isles. The Norman invasion reoriented England from the Scandinavian world to the Mediterranean one, and reintroduced many elements of Latin culture that had been lost in the Germanic invasions. The English Normans would eventually give rise to a purely British line of kings, the Plantagenets. Three centuries later, the Wars of the Roses was the final struggle between the Yorkist and Lancastrian descendants of the Plantagenets for control of the throne. The fighting resulted in the hunchback Yorkist Richard III taking the throne, before he was accidentally killed by his idiot nephew Edmund Blackadder,who would be cursed into a cycle fo reincarnation and death as a result. A poisoning took the life of both Blackadder and Richard IV, allowing Henry Tudor to seize the crown, erasing his predecessor form history. 113 years of Tudor rule had begun. In those years, a mystical presence not seen since Brutus founded the island began to form. The land became inhabited by Fairies, Dragons and Sorcerers. So strong was the presence of Magical beings that King Henry VIII chose the fairie blooded six fingered Ann Boleyn as his wife. The union gave rise to England's only non-human monarch. Gloriana I proved to be an inspiring figure and able ruler. No observer in 1558, any more than in 1485, would have predicted that despite the social discord, political floundering, and international humiliation of the past decades, the kingdom again stood on the threshold of an extraordinary age. Her reign ushered in two centuries of British exploration, colonization, and artistic and intellectual advances, as well as a renewed influx of magical arts, lost since the days of Arthur. Queen Gloriana would instruct Prospero, the Duke of Milan and lover Orlando into forming the first League of Extraordinary Gentlmen, known as Prospero's Men, eerily predicting her own death. The second stage of he plane was to devote an entire section of the Tower of London to the Time Traveller known as the Doctor, whom she secretly married. Sadly Gloriana, the "Faerie Queene," was assassinated and impersonated by Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, a master of disguise who promptly assumed her identity until his death in 1603. With no heirs, Parliament offered the crown to the closest blood kin, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England (1603-1625) and founded the Stuart dynasty. He began a violent purge of Magical beings that resulted I the Fairies Kingdom cutting off all ties with Britain by 1616 with the Wizarding world becoming more secretive as a result. The Stuarts kings did not possess the best luck; The November 5th plot to blow up Parliament was uncovered. Charles I was defeated by the forces of Parliament in the English Civil War led by Prospero's Men and executed, and a scant four decades later his descendent James II was also overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. But despite all this turbulence, by 1700 England had merged with Scotland to become "Britain" and established an identity that would be both Protestant and Parliamentry. The British Empire was to be one based on trade and control of the seas. Using the soldiers commonly denoted "Redcoats", every major war Britain engaged in during the 18th and 19th centuries increased its colonial power. The Seven Years' War was particularly notable in this respect. The American Revolution broke out with the Colonies emerging victorious and gaining independence. Then was the Napoleonic Wars were thanks to the efforts of a few great Generals such as Richard Sharpe and Horatio Hornblower, England was saved from speaking French. By 1820 the total population of the British Empire was 200 million, 26% of the world's total population. However acquired, all these acquisitions added to the crown's and the country's power and reputation. For the privileged and the rich, the Victorian era was pre-eminently one of confidence and arrogance, under the able guidance of Britain's two longtime Prime Ministers, Gladstone and Disraeli. Stretching from Australia and New Zealand through India, much of Africa, and Canada. England saw itself as the birthplace of a new generation of heroes such as Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermain and also generating or becoming assaulted by evil men such as Count Dracula, Mr.Hyde, Hawley Griffin, Captain Nemo, Professor Moriarty and Fu Manchu. Despite this England remained powerful. The British Empire under Queen Victoria was truly one on which the "sun never set." But the "long summer of peace" was battered first by the Martian invasion of London of 1898, believed by many to be the reason why England lost the Boer Wars. A mere 9 years the devastating War in the Air broke out, first between America and Germany and then England and France became involved. Following this period, England became more advanced thanks to the reverse engineering of Martian technology, making it a great power going into World War I. Although Britain suffered far less physical damage than France and underwent no political revolution, World War I may have affected it more fundamentally than any other European power. The war was a catalyst for social and economic change. The mainstays of the early Industrial Revolution, such as coal mining, textile production, and shipbuilding, upon which British prosperity had been built, were now impoverished or redundant in the face of new technology. Britain was slow to develop many of the newer manufacturing industries, such as those involving chemicals, electronics, and automobiles. British foreign policy for much of the postwar period aimed at rehabilitating Germany, while domestic policy focused on institutionalizing socialism to counter public concerns. In general, these movements were opposed by France and resulted in a rupture between Britain and its wartime ally, forcing France into a position of isolation that would have prodigious consequences for Europe with the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. England endured German Bombings during World War II and survived but left the nation bankrupt. Postwar Britain, in its panic, elected the ruthless and feared Sir Harold Wharton to the position of Prime Minister. Wharton, known by his epithet "Big Brother", made sweeping socialist reforms taking the population into one of modern history's most repressive societies. After Wharton's death in 1952, the "Airstrip One" period came to a quick end, aided by an invasion by the alien race known as the Chimera who nearly wiped out all life in the country followed by "the Day of the Triffids" and London falling under the thrall of a monstrous Space Fungus halted by the efforts of scientist Bernard Quartermass. In the 1950s and the 1960s, England became host to a number of both Superheroes and "Super spies". Most of these Heroes were inspired by their American Cousins. The most prominent hero of this time was Marvelman, who was forced to change his name for legal reasons. The "Super Spies" were born of the Cold War and included James Bond, Austin Powers, Emma Peel, John Steed and John Drake. Also of note is the mysterious time traveller, the Doctor, who would make occasional visitations to England at this time. Weakened by war and repression, Britain was unable to prevent the onset of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Britons maintained a high standard of living, the British economy continued to perform poorly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a reaction, Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) set out to end socialism in Britain. Her most dramatic acts consisted of a continuing series of statutes to denationalize nearly every industry that IngSoc had brought into public ownership during the previous 40 years. Her successor, Jim Hacker, largely helped to seal these reforms. Promising that "we shall govern as New IngSoc," the Blair government installed in general elections in 1997 accepted some of Thatcher's foreign policies but also carried out the economic reforms it promised in its manifesto, before disaster hit again. This led to rise of the Fascist party Norsefire. Norsefire. Like IngSoc before it, culture was carefully dictated, albeit not as bluntly as the Big Brother days. Nationalism and xenophobia nearly wiped out all minorities on the island, until a rogue terrorist known as "V" succeeded in destroying the government and plunging the state into anarchy. But in this chaotic void, the first signs of a new hope for humanity came, for in the many years that the world was wracked by infertility, it was in Britain that the first new child was born. Category:Locations